Float On
by DearGlasses
Summary: Her whole life just felt like a game, that her decisions, her friends, her face wasn't even hers. Image belongs to unlimitededitions on deviantArt.


**Title:** Float on  
**Summary:** Her whole life just felt like a game, that her decisions, her friends, _her face_ wasn't even hers.  
**Rating:** K  
**Disclaimer:** Mass Effect belongs to Bioware.  
**Authors Notes:** This is another one of those things I make when I have writers block. I crank out a ton of word vomit and post it. Then write half-formed drabbles, enter a slump, and word vomit again. Not beta-read, I'm too lazy, so please forgive any mistakes. AND DAMN IT REVIEW. I know people read these, gawsh!

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Float on.

That was all Jane needed to do. Float on, keep fighting, roll with the punches. That was all she could do. How she even managed to defeat Saren was unbelievable, to herself more than anyone. Sometimes, during some of the quieter nights on the Normandy, she wondered if he could have been saved. Her words, _her words_, had somehow conned him into killing himself. Part of herself wondered if she had gone through that situation many different times, in different universes. Then the collectors killed her, and her life, her body, _her very being_, became the plaything of Cerberus. She felt a huge amount of debt to the organization. They had brought her back. How that was even possible... But they had done so many _horrible_ things. They killed Admiral Kahoku. They _killed _him, and threw his body to the beasts. _Cerberus_ had been behind Akuze, but she couldn't bring herself to believe Toombs. No matter how hard she tried... no matter how much she wanted to believe him, trust him, it didn't make any sense. She couldn't wrap her mind around it. And because of that, Jane tried not to think about it. Tried to let it _slip_ from her mind.

She focused on building her team. Focused on keeping their consciouses clear, convicted, not paying attention to her own issues. Jane had seen things that would make an ordinary being go weak in the knees. And the nightmares, the primordial fears that seeped into her mind during sleep and left her thrashing against an unknown attacker that was nothing more that a bed sheet. She was alone. Jane Shepard was... _alone._ She had friends, teammates, crew members she got along with, a wise-ass pilot and a cheeky AI. They were all great, extraordinary people. And she was a terrible person for pushing every one of them away. She knew she should be out there, getting to know the crew and showing them she was human, just like them. Maybe Jane didn't socialize because she was _too human._ She had fish to feed, laundry to do, messages to delete answer. When did saving the galaxy become so _domestic?_ She didn't have a heart for it anymore. … ironic. When she was not a Cerberus zombie, saving the galaxy from Saren and the Geth... she had been much more motivated. She was excited, nervous, frustrated, willing to do missions, to grab her gun and _kill something._ Now, she felt nothing. It was a chore, a meaningless ritual she had to do or she wouldn't feel right for the rest of the day. She didn't want to do it, it was necessary. Wake up, eat, find and destroy a merc group, eat, do favor for teammate, recruit new teammate, eat, sleep. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Occasionally, there would be something that might tug at the corner of her mouth. A random issue of Fornax on Omega, or the model of Sovereign. She would buy them, maybe so they would think she still had a sense of humor. And that was fine.

Yes, the Collectors were abducting human colonies, but they hadn't really seemed like a huge threat. Nothing but creepy bug-aliens to shoot at and squish. So they were working for the reapers. So they were creating a human reaper. Perhaps some small part of her was horrified, and thats what she forced out during debriefs to make the crew believe her, that yes, Commander Shepard was still functioning and kicking and fighting as hard as ever. Which was good. It would be very bad if humanity's figurehead, or as Chakwas put it, their "immovable center" was discovered to be apathetic at best towards the collectors and the reaper threat. She could pretend she cared, that she loved and lost and stood up for what she believed in, but honestly... her whole life just felt like a game, that her decisions, her friends, _her face_ wasn't even hers. She was a marionette, being pulled by invisible threads, manipulated by invisible hands. Like every conversation and mission she had been part of was predetermined before she had even known it would happen. It was exhausting, mind-numbing. As though she had gone through the same story, met the same people, and had the same conversations hundreds of time, never quite satisfied with the result, and restarting, striving for perfection. Her face, her tone of voice, her mannerisms were exactly how her invisible master wanted her. Couldn't she _ever_ make her own decisions?

At times, everything just seemed to stop. Time would freeze, no one moved, no one blinked, no one _breathed._ For hours and hours, and then it would all resume and return back to normal. Was she the only one who noticed? She wanted to ask someone, anyone if they did, but she never had _the option._ It was like she was trapped in a glass box, like Jack. Screaming and pounding for freedom, recognition, free will, but on the outside, she was what someone made her. Hell, she couldn't even remember the details of her past. Akuze? No memory, but information. Thresher maw attacks, only survivor, _bull shit._ Spacer? What did her mother even _look like?_ Did her father even exist? Who was her school teacher? Or had she grown up on Earth, a poor urchin, and become a ruthless soldier? Or was she a colonist from Mindoir, becoming a war hero? Was _she?_ Or was her gender, the most basic part of herself predetermined too? Jane, was that really her name? She felt as if a thousand different people, with different personalties, back stories and faces, were all blended together and funneled into that one name, something that never changed. Shepard. Commander Shepard. She could let the council die, and still be Commander Shepard. She could romance any of the predetermined options, and still be Commander Shepard. Shepard, Shepard, _Shepard._ But perhaps she was just over thinking everything. After all, she was on a very stressful course. So she put on her mask, and let herself float on. All she had to do was

float on.


End file.
